On Friday I showed some of the pieced quilt backs I have made recently and promised I'd post a tutorial to show you how I do it. There are many ways to make a pieced quilt back. Below is one method & it is the one I use most of the time.

1. Here is the quilt top that I needed to make a back for. I pinned it to my design wall so that I can easily see how large it is. If you don't have a design wall the floor works for this step too.

Off the Rail #2
Pattern by Julie Herman
Quilt made by Candi Weinrick

2. I start with my label. It can be a printed label like the ones I do through spoonflower or it can be handwritten, embroidered, etc. Normally I want the label to pop a bit so I put a frame of fabric around it. {Like putting borders on a mini quilt.} Sometimes the frame is the same size on all sides but not always. I try to use up scraps that I may have cut from making the top etc.

Label with a green border.
The side fabric is wider than the top & bottom.

Here is the label from another quilt to show you some options.

Label with a blue border.
The frame is 2" around on all sides.

3. The next step is going through my stash and finding what big pieces of fabric I have that will work for backing. For this quilt I started with the green feather print. I cut a piece that was approximately 8" wider than my quilt top by the full width of fabric and pinned it to the design wall as shown below.

4. With the green pinned to the design wall I can easily see how much more of my quilt top needs to be covered. I selected a red feather print and cut it to the same width & pinned it to the design wall leaving a space for my label stripe.

5. I measured the height of my framed label from step #2 and cut two pieces of blue fabric the same height. I sewed them onto either side of the label to create the horizontal label stripe. I went back to the design wall and decided that I wanted to offset the label to the right.

Here is a closeup of the label stripe pinned to the design wall.

6. I cut my label stripe to the same width as my top & bottom pieces. I also removed the selvages from the red and green fabrics and made sure that each one had a nice straight edge before adding the label stripe. Then I sewed the label stripe to the green and pressed. Lastly I repeated with the red. When possible I use 1/2" seams for piecing the long straight seams of my backing.

7. As you can see by the small pile on the floor the length of the red is much longer than needed. You can trim the excess off now or you can wait till the quilt is quilted. If you send your quilts to a long arm quilter it is best to check and see if they have a preference.

8. Here is the finished quilt back.

Some things to note

1. It is hard to perfectly line up an element on the back and the front.

2. Don't place your label or an important design element on the back too close to any edge as you might risk it getting cut off.

3. If you are using lots of scraps on the back make sure that you have already set your binding fabric aside and don't accidentally use it. I did that once and had to go buy more!

4. In case you are wondering the fabric shown in the tutorial is Treasures & Tidbits by Piece o' Cake designs. The fabric shown in the button below is Pick a Bunch by Nancy Mims.

I've done one quilt where I successfully managed to line up a pieced area on the front and back. I loosely pin-basted the whole quilt where I had a lot of give around the area I wanted to line up, and then I un-taped it. I picked it up and hand-basted the pieced area to line it all up exactly. I then taped it back down and re-basted it with pins.

Minorly troublesome, but it worked out really well, and made all the difference to the appearance of that particular quilt.

Great tutorial with outstanding guidelines. I love pieced backs as they add so much interest to the back of my quilts. I am very careful and still offer a special prayer request as I baste that it is mostly straight. Usually I mark a large blue tape cross on the floor that I use for centering my back and layers as I sandwich and baste. It is always a challenge but the reward is an interesting back.

Does anyone have any tips/suggestions/links to inspire me? I'd like to add a sweet little phrase to my grandson's quilt that I say to him at bedtime whenever I'm visiting. Embroidery and permanent ink just won't cut it. Ideas?? A million thanks!!